Remote Control Equals Power:

You Got A Problem With That?

My equilibrium vanishes when Marilyn has the remote control. It's that same sense of dread you feel when you're sitting in the passenger seat and an inexperienced driver is careening down the highway playing chicken with 18-wheelers. You have to fight the urge to grab the wheel before the doofus brings you to an untimely end.

My wife clicks through the channels similarly, zapping when she should be braking, braking when she should be cruising, and I can only grip the sheets in fear, knowing it's just a matter of moments before she crashes us into "Living Single," "Beverly Hills, 90210," or, God save us all, "Sisters."

Thankfully, to preserve marital bliss, we don't watch television together very often, so controller envy isn't a major problem.

But I am familiar enough with the issue to know that my best bet is to smile guiltily, nod obsequiously and high-tail my testosterone-poisoned corpus out of the line of fire whenever women start talking about men and remote controls. The problem, as near as I've been able to tell while retreating, has to do with the male animal's absolute need to control the controller and how it only proves what . . . well, "controlling" creatures we are.

The thread of logic is depressingly easy to follow: The clicker equals power because whoever holds it decides what will be watched. And "girl," they say, hands on hips, you know there's nothing more power-crazy than a man.

Worse yet, they say, when it comes to watching television, the average guy has the attention span of a gerbil on speed. We are the Moon Doggies of channel surfing, so into the Zen of riding the electronic waves that we wind up missing most of whatever it is we were theoretically watching.

"Men want to know what they're `not' watching more than they want to know what they're watching," said Tim Logsdon, an executive of Philips Consumer Electronics in Knoxville. "We don't want to settle down and commit to anything," he added, earning with that statement the undying enmity of his fellow men all over North America.

Magnavox, a subsidiary of Philips, recently commissioned a survey on humankind's relationship with remote controls. Here's what they learned:

When asked who was most likely to control the remote at their house, 62 percent of men said they were. The corresponding number for women: 37 percent. That adds up to 99 percent. So the sexes are in rare near-perfect agreement on this issue.

Perhaps because their fellows are so taken with the remote, many women seem less taken with their fellows. I mean, how else am I to interpret the fact that 18 percent of women surveyed said if they had to choose between giving up sex or the remote control for a week, they'd give up the sex? Predictably, only 9 percent of men said that.

The same survey indicated that 55 percent of all TV watchers lose the remote up to five times a week. Sixty-three percent spend up to five minutes a day looking for it. Men took the blame for losing it most often-not surprising, since we apparently "have" it most often.

That last part is of more than passing interest to Logsdon. In what I'm sure is a completely selfless (wink-wink) effort to alleviate marital misery over lost remotes, Philips has unveiled its new Magnavox line of TVs with "Remote Locators." That's right-a television that finds your lost remote. It works by causing the missing device to beep for 30 seconds when you press a button on the TV.

Having recently spent two days searching for a remote rather than face the arduous task of actually stretching out my arm to turn on the set, I can really get into the notion of a non-losable zapper. So I went to an electronics superstore the other day to get a demonstration.

Unfortunately, the sales guys couldn't figure out how to make the newfangled set work. I must admit, though, it was kind of fun to watch them grabbing the controller from each other.

Is that what we look like to women? Small wonder 18 percent would dump us before they'd give up their clickers.

Sure, we still have the other 82 percent in our corner. But I suspect that's only because David Caruso and his butt are leaving "NYPD Blue."